


Fragments, Glory, And What It Is To Lose

by blood-and-cigars (goblins_riddles_frocks)



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Also mentions of some medical horror fyi, Angst, Another Alucard Loses His Shit style fic, Anyway this is basically what the series would be like if I had my way, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Master/Servant, One Shot, Self Harm, This is meant to be right after they return from their first encounter with Anderson in Badrick, We’re going stream of consciousness with this one, also we’re ADDRESSING that Integra says Hellsing has been researching Alucard for a century, and everything would focus on ANGST and EMOTIONS and UNNECESSARY SACRILEGE, or um... hurting yourself for comfort?, that would extend to when she herself is running things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26003275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblins_riddles_frocks/pseuds/blood-and-cigars
Summary: Following his first encounter with Anderson, Alucard muses about everything Integra said, and he struggles with a very basic question: What is he?He decides to make this Integra’s problem.
Relationships: Alucard & Integra Hellsing, Alucard/Integra Hellsing
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63





	Fragments, Glory, And What It Is To Lose

Once the high of battle faded, and the promise of bloodshed with it, Alucard found himself in the sublevels. Yes it was closer to _finding_ because when the energy and the focus and the heady tide of letting his own flesh tear and his blood spill out in waves before drawing back to him dutifully, when all of that washed away, he all but had to piece himself together again.  
  
 _What am I,_ he’d say to himself, and among all the sights and sounds and senses he had no words for, he catalogued what was him. Down to the red heavy fabric he’d manifested through his will, and the constant brush of the silk gloves against his fingertips.  
  
He tested the seals, and the absence of that well of power that he could only reach into with proper provocation. And of course there was the bond.  
  
 _What am I,_ he thought again, laughing at himself for questioning. What he was, was a dog on a leash. All he had been, and all he ever would be encompassed within the delicate string of magic tying him to his master. 

As for her, well she was upstairs. And she was upset. He could sense that she was thinking about lives lost. Those two men the priest had cut down earlier that night— he’d never learned their names. But that wasn’t part of his careful catalogue of self, and so he disregarded it.  
  
What mattered was that Integra was upstairs, and even though she might be upset, she was fine. She was more than that, she’d held her own wonderfully that night. Witnessing death brought the coldest cruelty out of her.  
  
Her words from earlier echoed back to him: _One hundred glorious years._ _  
_  
She would think so, he could never fault her for thinking so— if he could fault her for anything at all. Her family’s legacy, a singular and effective one at that. Of course she’d pride in it, despite the occasional apologetic glance, despite the way her breath had stilled the first time she read one of the many medical reports her family had kept on him.

___ 

Some years ago— at least that was his estimate— he’d caught her weeping. It must’ve been back when she was less adept at hiding tears. She did not betray such vulnerabilities anymore. Regardless, he had caught her weeping, and amidst the vague shadows of emotions and unintelligible ideas he sensed from her, he saw a specter of a thought. And it had looked curiously as if... she were crying for him.

But ah, what silliness that was. 

  
She’d said it herself, one hundred glorious years. She was proud, not regretful— and why shouldn’t she be?

Frankly, he thought to himself, he was delighted to realize the scraps of pity he thought he saw in her heart had never existed at all. He’d never been so glad to be mistaken. He laughed at the absurdity of the thought, that a Hellsing might ever regret.  
  
It was irrational. Nonsensical. Impossible.  
  
His laughter echoed off the stone walls, coming back to him fainter, a touch madder. It had been some time since he’d laughed hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. Of course they were tears of amusement. Weren’t they?

___

“Master.”  
  
He startled out of his reverie. 

Seras.  
  
Oh, yes, he was still there. In the sublevel, below ground but not deep enough for the dungeons yet. Those cells were farther down. He was not.  
  
Seras still looked anxious behind that smile, he could sense that she wanted to make sure he was really fine. She looked at him and remembered a decapitated head. She couldn’t blink away the blood staining the dingy wooden floor. It was endearing in a way, if very misinformed.  
  
He hadn’t answered so she continued, “What’s so funny?”  
  
“And what isn’t?” He’d quieted, though the remnants of that laughter still played at his lips. It wouldn’t do to frighten her. She was already distressed. “What did you learn tonight, Police Girl?”  
  
“I’m... not sure.” Seras fidgeted with her gloves. When she had first arrived, (to Hellsing, to death, to all of this) he remembered that she used to try to avoid spending time in the underground levels. It didn’t seem to bother her as much anymore. He imagined she’d found more pressing fears now. 

“Give it a guess.” He noticed a slight tremor in his own hands, so he folded them in his lap. She hadn’t seen it. Good.

It would be so easy to let the offending hands rot off the bone. That would certainly fix the tremble. 

Sometimes he cut into himself, past the simulacra of flesh, past the blood, to the oozing darkness that his body really constituted of. It was a soothing thing. 

Finally Seras said, “That we should’ve checked all entrances and took some time for proper reconnaissance before going after the ghouls?”  
  
 _One hundred glorious years_ , his master had said.  
  
“We certainly could have, but then that would’ve cut the night very short. It was far more interesting this way. Wouldn’t you say? Try again.”  
  
He remembered Abraham’s eyes, razor sharp, and always shrewd. The memory was so vivid and familiar, like something he saw every day. It was a strange thing to consider, that those eyes would never look right past him again. 

Sometimes when Integra was very frustrated, there was something of that same ice in her gaze. He often wondered if he could cut himself on it like a blade. 

“That the Catholic Church has insane vampire hunting priests in its employ?” Seras replied, unaware of his drifting thoughts. She was still firmly there, between the four stone walls of this one dark room. Meanwhile he had somehow become entirely untethered.

  
“While true, that wasn’t the most important thing.”

No, the tremble was very bad now. 

“That... you have a knack for blood calligraphy?” She shrugged. Her frustration wafted over to him, she didn’t want a lesson, she was feeling too high strung for that. But... _interesting_ , she wasn’t certain what she wanted either. Then again, who knew what they wanted anyway? “I’m sorry, I don’t know. There was a lot.”  
  
He felt more hysterical laughter building up in his chest. It wouldn’t do to let his fledgling witness it. “Keep considering it then, and find me when you have a better answer,” and with that he allowed his body to fade away. There could be no compulsive laughter when he made himself into mist, and it was less gruesome than clawing at his own body in front of her. 

“Master?” she said to the empty room, but of course he was still there. 

He sighed. “Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

“Never better.” 

“I really hope that’s not true.” The last was said under her breath, but he had no trouble hearing it. 

___

It was freeing to be like this, to be nothing, floating through the air. He drifted aimlessly through the manor, slowly making his way upstairs. 

He watched the staff, these living humans. How easy it would be to bite into them, and drift off into their minds, and their memories. Integra hadn’t expressly forbidden him from drinking from the staff, not for several years now. She’d said she trusted him not to.  
  
When he killed, that was what he reveled in. Those few moments where drinking his victim’s lifeblood and their pasts, their identities washed over him, overpowering his own.  
  
He often wondered if he himself— that old, forgotten self, moth eaten and dusty with disuse— was ever really his to begin with. What if Vlad had just been another one of his prey, some human he’d drank dry in a centuries old battlefield with memories too strong to fade.  
  
But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? He might ignore his self, but he could never peel it off like a second skin. 

Integra had been very angry with him at some point, he couldn’t remember why. But it was during their earliest days. She’d thrown her silver crucifix at him in childish pique, threatened to put him back where she’d found him.  
  
He’d watched himself laugh at her silliness. It was taunting her for the outburst. All the while he was thinking _oh, so this is how it will truly be._

It hadn’t been as he’d expected. For better or for worse, she was kind, and sometimes even tormented him with hope, of all the cruel things. 

Even so, the silver had left a mark on his cheek, just the smallest burn. He’d left it there for awhile. Made it heal as close to naturally as he could manage. He’d missed its absence the first few days it was completely gone. _  
  
____

Alucard drifted through the walls to Integra’s suite. He wasn’t allowed there unless called, but she hadn’t forbidden him from entering either. 

Integra was at her dressing table, brushing her hair. She was dressed for comfort, silk pyjamas and a smoking jacket. Somehow they made her look smaller, fragile. He remained in the shadows but of course she sensed him immediately. 

“Is something wrong?” 

“Not at all,” he said, appearing behind her. He caught her hand mid stroke; she let him take the brush from her. 

“You know I don’t like you in here.” Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. But still, she let him continue where she left off, drawing the brush through her long hair. The very first glow of dawn was slowly unfurling outside her window. It cast the room in a pale blue light. 

“It’s been a long night,” she said. And she looked like she wanted to say more. Integra had the oddest habit of confiding in him, he never understood it. 

“And now it is at its end.” 

“I…” She sighed. He could sense her mood shifting. Whatever it was that had been on the tip of her tongue was no longer her main concern. Oh. She was displeased. “You risked the girl earlier. With your dramatics.”

“How else is she to learn?”

“That last bayonet was aimed for her head. If I hadn’t gotten there—”

“But you did,” he insisted absently, still drawing the brush through her hair. 

“If I hadn’t?” 

He was silent, staring at their reflections in the mirror. He searched the elegant planes of her face for echoes of Arthur or Abraham, and in that moment he could find none. This was Integra. Tired, a little annoyed, and very familiar. For a ridiculous moment he considered burying his face in her hair. 

_One hundred glorious years._

“Then her lesson would have been hard earned.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “And what lesson is that?”

“What it is to lose,” he replied, almost absently. He could not tear his gaze away from her face.  
  


___

Integra had once asked him why he didn’t simply leave. 

“Leave what?” he’d replied, not comprehending what she could possibly mean by the question. 

“Hellsing, me, everything.” 

“I cannot.” 

“Do you want to?” she’d asked in turn. There was something very guileless about her features. 

He’d laughed at that. “Then who else would you send off after petty vampires, Integra?” 

As if there were anywhere for him to go. Where else would he be, if not serving her?   
  


___

In the present, she frowned, waiting for him to elaborate. But he was silent.

He’d begun to make a habit of reminding himself that he did not love her. On some occasions, he was increasingly forgetful.

“That’s all? No overwrought speech? No ridiculous explanation?”  
  
“Must I have something to say?” And he didn’t mean it to, but the words came out clipped. 

“Well, you’re here.”

“Must I have a reason?”

“Just admit you wanted the company,” she said with a slight smile that still did not reach her eyes. It barely touched the rest of her face. “Or were you really so bothered by having your head cut off?”

“I was _not_.”

“Testy today.” Despite her evident weariness, there was something too close to fondness in her voice. It almost hurt. He couldn’t say why. 

And _still_ he couldn’t respond. 

He’d said it’d been awhile since he had his head cut off. He still remembered the very first time, the memory still vivid even as everything else had faded. 

He could not remember the face of his children. Or his wives. Either one. He did not remember the first mouthful of blood he’d tasted after being remade into a true monster— he had been a monster before, but now his body reflected that. 

But he remembered the executioner’s blade. He remembered his head being severed from his body, and truly wouldn’t everything have been easier if that had been the only time? The last time?

“Alucard?”

He hadn’t noticed dropping the brush but now it was on the floor. He was gripping the back of her chair to keep his hands from shaking. 

Her eyes were fixed on him with more confusion than concern, her hand half lifted. For a moment he thought she might rest her hand on his. He pulled away sharply before he could see whether or not she would.   
  


___

In the waning years of Abraham’s reign, he’d looked at him once (he’d looked at Alucard often of course, but this was different). Abraham, by then frail and sickly, but never allowing for melancholy. 

“Will I ever be at peace with my God?” He’d said, in a musing way, but Alucard knew the question to be sincere. “And will God ever be at peace with me? I’ve committed the unspeakable so many times over, it’s lost its luster, wouldn’t you say, vampire?”  
  
“Even mortal sin becomes mundane after a time, Professor. And yet there is no absolution of sins for us, the excommunicated.”

“You turned away from your God.”

He’d shrugged. “And yet I am no less barred from my faith.” 

In those last years again, Alucard had regretted being defeated with nearly the same intensity as when he’d first been caught. In capturing him, Abraham Van Helsing had destroyed his own life. He could’ve spared Abraham by escaping him. But he’d been too weak even for that.   
  


___

“What’s gotten into you?” Integra turned in her chair to finally look at him. He realized suddenly that he could not bear to meet her gaze, not in that moment. Not without the veil of the mirror separating them. 

“Nothing at all Master. The daylight only exhausts me; I’ll leave you now,” he said too quickly, already beginning to melt away into shadow. 

“You will not.” The quiet authority in her voice was enough to stop him in his tracks. “You do not intrude on my personal quarters to make a nuisance of yourself, look about ready to faint, and then run off without any explanation.” 

He laughed, though it was a hollow sound. In this half corporeal state, at least she couldn’t see the more minute flaws in his composure. “Of course not, Master.” 

Integra folded her arms; she looked exhausted. “Well?” 

“It is not so often I hunt for an audience,” he said, summoning up all his haughtiness. It was a sad façade, but she was clearly weary and upset herself. Perhaps this would be enough. “And after I went to so much trouble for the performance, I was not even allowed the pleasure of a kill.”

“You’re sulking because I didn’t let you go after Anderson?” She sounded incredulous. “I don’t even want to think of the uproar that would’ve caused.”

“Ah, but what’s one priest?” He grinned, baring teeth. 

She shook her head, and reached down to retrieve her fallen brush. 

“If nothing else, I might’ve given him more to remember me by. Perhaps a wound or two that wouldn’t heal quite so easily.”

“You’re wretched,” she said with just enough humor that it didn’t quite sting. 

He shrugged. “But were you not extolling my virtues earlier? Tell me, am I a wretch or am I the great family legacy?”

“You can be both.” That _did_ sting, however. He couldn’t even say why.

No, he did not love her. Even as he urged her to continue her father’s research. He did not love her even as he willingly submitted to being poked and prodded and cut open regularly. 

_One hundred glorious years of research_. 

She rose to her feet. It seemed she was appeased. He could’ve stopped there, but the words tumbled out anyway. “How do you measure glory, Integra?”

She sighed and turned to him, waiting for him to continue. This time he could not look away. 

“How would you quantify it? Where would you find it? In a stake? In silver chains? Flayed bodies? Perhaps it lies in holy water, but would there be more glory to it, if it were dripping over scorched flesh?”

After a long while, she finally said, “No. You cannot measure it.”

“This is such bloody work Integra. Where is the righteousness? The higher purpose? Perhaps it lies in you.”

He always told her that he did not mind it. Any of it. Not even the research. She’d asked, over and over again. _It’s nothing,_ he’s insisted every time. And it wasn’t. It meant nothing that the sight of a scalpel made his skin crawl. That the breath he did not need would seize in his lungs. It meant nothing as long as he was serving his Master to the best of his ability. 

This was not love. It was belonging. It was duty. Devotion. 

“Are you finished yet?” She watched him, eyebrows raised, as he reached into his coat and removed his gun. 

He examined it as if he hadn’t seen it before, turning it this way and that in the dim light of her bedroom. “Do I pray to you with every blessed bullet? Is it an act of worship to snap an enemy’s bones between my teeth?”

“No it’s your own blood lust.”

He laughed. “If this unbeating heart continues to exist by your grace, does that make you my God?”

“This isn’t funny.” Her gaze was growing colder. Yes, those eyes alone could make him bleed. 

“No. It isn’t,” he agreed, but he continued anyway. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if you are God. Returned to walk this earth just to punish me for my sins.”

She said nothing for several stunned moments. “I’m not God. There’s a great deal of hubris in that statement.”

He took her hands, and pressed his own gun into them. She was not wearing gloves, but he was. Even so, the contact felt like too much, like it might burn him. Which was precisely why he did not release her. “Punish me anyway.”

The exasperation in her voice was lovely. “For what?” 

“For doubt. For imperfect service.” 

She let him position her hands, remove the safety, and place her finger on the trigger. “You haven’t done anything— besides making a nuisance of yourself.” 

He crossed what little distance there was between them, so that the barrel pressed against his chest, at his heart. “Then teach me a lesson.”

Integra did not pull away, even though she so clearly wanted to. She regarded him with a level gaze. It was a look that said he was being incredibly ridiculous and she was indulging him. “What could I possibly teach you, Alucard?”

“Remind me what it is to have lost. Remind me what it is to be nothing.” He took in a slow breath, making the sensation last. “Remind me of the glory of my Master.” 

“Is that really what you want?”

“Yes.” 

His fingers tightened around hers, so that they pulled the trigger together. She did not recoil or flinch away, even in that last moment. And in the space between the Casull firing and the bullet making contact with his heart, he allowed himself this truth: he did love her for that. 

It was an indulgence, this façade of physical weakness, but somehow she’d allowed it.   
  


___

 _What am I,_ he thought again, letting himself crumple to the ground. Among all the sights and smells and varieties of pain, he catalogued himself. The precise size of the wound, where his blood spilt on the rug, and how the exploding shell of that silver bullet had lodged into his body. 

He decided it didn’t matter. 

**Author's Note:**

> I drafted this ages ago but never really got around to cleaning it up. I’m mostly laying it now because I like the concept, but I also doubt I’ll get any further with it. Apologies if it’s a tad tougher than what I usually post.
> 
> ALSO yes I know the story hinges on a paraphrased manga quote! I think the “one hundred glorious years” thing has a pretty similar intent throughout all translations, none of them actually made sense for this fic out of context though, so I took some liberties with the exact phrasing.


End file.
